"Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leapt forward, as it were, from its stagnatory condition of abject fear. It traveled swiftly, urged by a pursuing dread over plans for the future. The guiding star of his thought was safety. At all costs he must find safety for his property and himself. So long as Retief was at large there could ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... prostrated himself before the king was not permitted to lift up his head until the king bade him lift it up. Nimrod gave permission to Terah to rise and state his request. Thereupon Terah related all that had happened with his wife and his son. When Nimrod heard his tale, abject fear seized upon him, and he asked his counsellors and princes what to do with the lad. They answered, and said: "Our king and our god! Wherefore art thou in fear by reason of a little child? There are myriads upon myriads of princes ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... men not being met by a corresponding advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium in the social balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached to the smile of beauty. The dethroned sovereigns, from being imperious, became abject, and sought, by paltry arts, to perpetuate the empire which was no longer conceded as a right. Influence they still possessed, but an influence debased in its character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead of being the objects ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... time we had. The elephants got down off that pyramid so quick it would make your head swim, and old Bolivar trumpeted in abject fear, and tried to break away, but pa came along with a tent stake and hit Bolivar over the head, and told the trainer to put the elephants back into the pyramid and hold them there till the bell rung for them to cease their stunt. The trainer couldn't ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... crime in modern Europe. To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, relations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him. He must enter the casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject functions. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... undesirable factor in experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific tangible reward—say comfort and ease—many other capacities are left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men, since, and can never be gods again, but only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... presence, and caught at a post for support. His self-possession was gone; he trembled like the most abject coward. Only for a moment—and then, when he looked again, the apparition ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... days were occupied in getting together a crew, for the natives had an abject fear of entering the country of the cannibal Fans. Mr. Goodenough promised that they should not be obliged to proceed unless a safe conduct for their return was obtained from the King of the Fans. A large canoe was procured, sufficient to convey the whole party. Twelve ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Sweesey," replied the girl, somewhat softened by his abject demeanor. "Here is the paper father wanted me to take to you. I think I'd better be going back to town after this. And I promise you I'll never again ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate, tasting nothing of what went into ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... on hearing of it, returned to Peking, having sent word to Feyanku to pursue Galdan with unrelenting vigor, there being no security while he remained at large. The recent powerful chief was now at the end of his resources. He fled for safety from camp to camp. He sent an envoy to Peking with an abject offer to surrender. He made new overtures to the Russians, and sought in a dozen ways to escape from his implacable enemies. But Feyanku kept up the pursuit, ceasing only when word came to him that the fugitive was dead. Anxiety, hardships, chagrin, or, as some say, the act of his own hand, had carried ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... adding that no laws, human or divine, no institutions, no supremacy whatever, could authorize a parent to stain his hands in the blood of his children. These anecdotes are sufficient both to elucidate the inveteracy of the favourite, the abject state of the heir to the throne, and the incomprehensible infatuation of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... footboy," and the Duke of Suffolk, when he is about to be killed by his pirate captor at Dover, calls him "obscure and lowly swain," "jaded groom," and "base slave," dubs his crew "paltry, servile, abject drudges," and declares that his ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... convict Dr Pendle of murdering Jentham, and could show him the links in the chain of circumstances by which he arrived at such a conclusion, he had little doubt but that the bishop, to induce him to hide the crime, would become his abject slave. To gain such an immense power, and use it for the furtherance of his own interests, Cargrim was quite prepared to compound a possible felony; so the last case of the bishop would be worse than ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... you was mean enough to kill the mother bird just for fun." Ham's hat had long since come off, and he stood with downcast eyes, not knowing what to say. The old lady looked him up and down with a look of abject pity and ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... having the witch so near, but by no means neglected her duty to her. One night she woke, and had for some time lain listening whether she stirred or not, when suddenly quavered through the dark the most horrible cat-cry she had ever heard. In abject terror she covered her head, and lay shuddering. The cry came again, and kept coming at regular intervals, but drawing nearer and nearer. Its expression was of intense and increasing pain. The creature whence ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... drop the character that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness,' and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... illustrious D.K.T. had written Miss Angelina an abject apology, most witty and poetic, taking all the blame to himself and more than exonerating his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sitting up on the lounge when Owen returned. She was pale, and a haunting fear, cringing, abject, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... every object around you. It shapes the carriage in which you ride, and the ship in which you sail. Its knowledge modifies the nature of your soul, and decides whether you shall be a slave or a freeman. It even extends to the form of your body, giving it the abject attitude and gloomy aspect of slavery and guilt, or the bold, upright carriage and joyous look of virtue, which God gave to the first man when He made ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a very timid warrior,—cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame, guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a trap, show fight; but Reynard has more ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... from the dangers and hysteric strivings of his fellows. Once when Theriere happened to glance in his direction the Frenchman mentally ascribed the mucker's seeming lethargy to the paralysis of abject cowardice. "The fellow is in a blue funk," thought the second mate; "I did not misjudge him—like all his kind he is a ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Spanish; the two sailors, of whom one was an Italian; and one of the soldiers, were quartered in the glebe barn—the rest in one of Sir Thomas Enville's barns. Two of the soldiers were Pyrenees men, and spoke French. All of them, except the Moor and the Italian, were possessed by abject terror, expecting to be immediately killed, if not eaten. The Italian, who was no stranger to English people, and into whose versatile mind nothing sank deep, was the only blithe and cheerful man in ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... it,—when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... every fool can understand, tore off the masks of education, art, science and religion from our ignorance and barbarism, and left us glorying grotesquely in the licence suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most abject terrors. Ever since Thucydides wrote his history, it has been on record that when the angel of death sounds his trumpet the pretences of civilization are blown from men's heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... was still open, and a faint light gleamed through the soiled red curtains. Over the frontage appeared the shop-keeper's name, Vantrasson, while on either side, in smaller letters, were the words: "Groceries and Provisions—Foreign and French Wines." Everything about this den denoted abject ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Wager, for registering all seamen, watermen, fishermen, and lightermen, throughout his majesty's dominions. Had this bill passed into a law, a British sailor would have been reduced to the most abject degree of slavery; had he removed from a certain district allotted for the place of his residence, he would have been deemed a deserter, and punished accordingly; he must have appeared when summoned, at all hazards, whatever might have been the circumstances of his family, or the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a tree that it was no longer ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... I am convinced that if we should be contented for the present with damming up prostitution and suppressing the causes which render prostitutes more and more abject, without yet being able to abolish the whole evil, a transformation of our social life, and especially the suppression of the reign of capital as a means of exploitation of the work of others, and suppression of the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... a moment of indecision before the plain, old-fashioned, brick house in which Senator Winter lived on the Capitol Hill. It was a confession of abject weakness to decline her invitation to dinner with his brother and jump at the first chance to butt in before the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... found it very intelligible. He begged to propose four questions to the noble and learned lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, "paid the highest compliments to Lord Camden." He had the highest esteem for the noble and learned lord who thus attacked him, and had ever courted his esteem in return. He had not expected this treatment from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... overview: Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country's widespread deforestation. A macroeconomic program developed in 2005 with the help of the International ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... brethren'—in the original Hebrew means exactly this—'Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves shall he be.' The Hebrew, word is 'ebed' which means a bond slave, and the words 'ebed ebadim' translated 'slave of slaves,' means strictly the most abject of slaves. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... after the collapse of the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the men had been quiet, if furious. But now they fell into abject terror, imploring Tish, whom they easily recognized as the leader, to take ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he must do the best he can to get rid of them. I am safe." Of such materials is the net composed that holds these people in bondage; and who can marvel that such prostration of mind before a fellow-mortal should lead to an abject slavery of the whole man, body, conscience, and understanding? We see the effects, and abhor them; but we do not go to the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last, when the procession stopped, he—and his mythical sixteen—marched the entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Society was instituted in September 1788, for the prevention of crimes, by seeking out and training up to virtue and industry the children of the most abject and criminal among the vagrant and profligate poor; by these means more effectually to alleviate human misery, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear. That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won't know her in a week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be too happy and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... saw a man alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, Nor hair that fell from crown to wrist, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... becoming respect, but he never gave the smallest encouragement to aristocratical arrogance'; and his son Robert was not less manly and independent. He was too sound in judgment; too conscious of his own worth, to sink into mean and abject servility. But this factor, perhaps more than anyone else, did much to pervert, if he could not kill, the poet's ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... heresies; that it was administered, moreover, out of paternal affection by a spiritual father, whom it did not mis-become, to a son who was not dishonoured by receiving it. The unfortunate elector not only suffered in the ear, but was also obliged to make an abject apology, and to kiss the offender's feet before he was re-admitted to communion. At Maopongo the priests lost favour with the court and the women by whipping the queen, and, by the same process they abated the superhuman pretensions of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the women, no longer quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job's abject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the feelings expressed upon his countenance when he realised that he was not only being embraced publicly, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... salmon-pink sunset seen through the lacing of tall black boles of leafless trees, or a flower, happed upon unexpectedly, that reads you a half-forgotten lesson in "country art"—that same man will be reduced to abject misery and real suffering by a dirty tablecloth, a vulgar, uncongenial companion, or even the presence of a bright blue gown in a chamber subdued to utmost harmonies in gold and yellow. The curse with him follows all too swiftly on the blessing of enjoyment—and lasts longer. And ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Charles fell into the snare laid for him, and Henrietta carried most of the points of that disgraceful treaty, which rendered the King of England the pensioned tool of France, and his reign the most abject in the annals ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the door of his cave. It was Flavius, the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling and to offer his services; and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected this good servant that he stood speechless, wrapped up in horror and confounded. And when he found utterance at last to his words, they were ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... palely. Then she was in bed, full of the sensation that the whole house was inverted and disorganized, hopelessly. And the doctor came into the room. She smiled at the doctor apologetically, foolishly, as if saying: "We all come to it. Here I am." She was calm without. Oh, but what a prey of abject fear within! "I am at the edge of the precipice," her thought ran; "in a moment I shall be over." And then the pains—not the heralds but the shattering army, endless, increasing in terror as they thundered across her. Yet she could think, quite clearly: "Now I'm in the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They had seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, they had climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, to watch the ship's ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... fascinated, stupefied by the confusion and the mystery of it. She carried him off under Mrs. Viveash's unhappy nose. Wherever she went she called him, and he followed, flushed and shamefaced. He showed himself now pitifully abject, and now in pitiful revolt. Once or twice he was positively rude to her, and Miss Tarrant seemed to enjoy ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... completely missed the point of my remarks, and utterly failed to comprehend the frightfully precarious and perilous character of her position aboard the brig; moreover, her mere presence there served O'Gorman as a lever and a menace powerful enough to constrain me irresistibly to the most abject submission to his will; so long as she remained where she was, in the power of these ruffians, I could do absolutely nothing, for fear of what they might inflict upon her by way of revenge; but with her removed ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... I could see, being close by, having been attracted by the row as most of us were, had altered their expression, now flashing with a peculiar glare as the Chinaman, with a more abject bow than before to the captain, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... received with great joy by the inhabitants, who had been in a state of abject terror. A runner, who was the bearer of a message to the rajah from the headman, had left on the morning after Harry's party had started; and had returned with the news that he had found the headless bodies of all the escort, but had ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... dogma. The haughtiness and selfishness of the hierarchic spirit, the exclusiveness, cruelty, and cunning tyranny of many of the ancient priesthoods, are well known. Despising, hating, and fearing the people, whom they held in abject spiritual bondage, they sought to devise, diffuse, and organize such opinions as would concentrate power in their own hands and rivet their authority. Accordingly, in the lower immensity they painted and shadowed forth the lurid and dusky image of hell, gathering around ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... animal and very fierce as a rule, though in the case of a noted man-eater I have known it exhibit a curious mixture of ferocity and abject cowardice. It is stated to be of a more retiring disposition than the next species, but this I doubt, for I have frequently come across it in the neighbourhood of villages to which it was probably attracted ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... ground, with here and there a few meagre crops of corn. The natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in the course of our travels: whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; and, asking for charity, used the most abject gestures....The Polish peasants are cringing and servile in their expressions of respect; they bowed down to the ground; took off their hats or caps and held them in their hands till we were out of sight; stopped their carts on the first glimpse of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in abject terror, unable to move. Her fear stricken eyes were wild and staring as the mountain of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... waiting the fray, with whom the grisly one grappled amain. But the man remembered his mighty power, the glorious gift that God had sent him, in his Maker's mercy put his trust for comfort and help: so he conquered the foe, felled the fiend, who fled abject, reft of joy, to the realms of death, mankind's foe. And his mother now, gloomy and grim, would go that quest of sorrow, the death of her son to avenge. To Heorot came she, where helmeted Danes slept in the hall. Too soon came back old ills of the earls, when in she burst, the mother ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... of him that begot, And the travail of her that bore, Behold they are evermore As warp and weft in our lot. We are children of splendour and flame, Of shuddering, also, and tears. Magnificent out of the dust we came, And abject from the Spheres. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... sincerely crave your pardon, if it isn't too late," I cried, abject once more. (I don't know what gets into me once in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... no true American, at the thought of one million dollars, can remain covered. His letter to me had said, "for our mutual benefit." I became respectful and polite, I might even say abject. After all, the ties that bind us in those dear old college days are not ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... they were driven to entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear—conscious to the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their enemies the priceless ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin, providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works; but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and it was ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of proof. He had received bribes; he had given false judgments for money; he had perverted justice to secure the smiles of Buckingham, the favorite; and when a commission was appointed to examine these charges he was convicted. With abject humility, he acknowledged his guilt, and implored the pity of his judges. The annals of biography present no sorrier picture than this. "Upon advised consideration of the charges," he wrote, "descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... are all born to obedience, to depend on and follow some person or thing. There is only a choice of services; and he who boasts himself free is but a more abject slave, as the choice for a nation is either the rule of settled order and the sanctities of an established law, or the usurpation of a mob and the intolerable tyranny of unbridled and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... what a dupe he had been in the hands of the clever scoundrels, was covered with fear and shame. The outraged crowd might have killed him had not his escape been made under cover of darkness. Shivering and moaning in abject misery, the pride of Tinkletown fled unseeing, unthinking into the forest along the river. He was not to know until afterward that his "detectives" had stripped the rich sojourners of at least ten thousand dollars in money and jewels. It is not necessary to say that the performance of "As You ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... must be low, to avoid being abject, and despicable, you must borrow some light from the Expression; not such as is dazling, but pure, and lambent, such as may shine thro the whole matter, but never flash, and blind. {58} The words of such a Stile ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... to express, I most readily gave myself up to her seductions, and in a very short time she obtained such an influence over me that everything I possessed was at her disposal. Before long, she had so plundered me, and led me into such extravagance, that I was reduced to the most abject poverty, and had nothing I could call my own but this miserable rag which you now see ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... infected my wife, as soon as she was reassured as to my personal safety. All of them were furious with the sculptor Hanel, who had never ceased insisting upon the expedience of bolting the house to prevent an entry of the revolutionaries. All the women without exception were joking about his abject terror at the sight of some men armed with scythes who had appeared in the street In this way Sunday passed like a sort of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition. It disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion, which may be shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong ties of public and private interest. For if all men who act in a public situation are equally selfish, corrupt, and venal, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop to such an abject lot. At length, indeed, we see the tyrant humbled, stripped of power, but stripped by those who, in the main, are not unwilling to play the despot on a narrower scale, and to break down the spirit of nations under ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... agent, for purposes little less than infernal! I will forgive thee, since thy master and my master will have it so. And indeed thou art beneath the resentment even of such a poor girl as I. I will pity thee, base and abject as thou art. And she who is the object of my pity is ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Certainly it is morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss her feet, which in reward would spurn him. Quite normal, too, is the boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (Kraft-Ebbing calls this pageism) described so beautifully in Dostoievsky's novel, A Young Hero, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of this business that I don't understand," mused he as he paced onward; little thinking how soon he is to be enlightened on this and sundry other subjects. "I never felt more sanguine of bringing a crooked operation to a successful termination, and I never yet made such an abject failure. I shall make it my business to find out, and at once, what is this power behind the throne. So, according to Miss Wardour, may Satan fly away with her, I am not to approach the Lamotte's, I am to lose my reward, I am to retire from the field like a whipped cur. Miss Wardour, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... time we have been discovering that vast numbers of our farming population live in a poverty more abject than that of many of the farmers of Europe whom we are wont to call peasants; that the prices of our products of agriculture are too often dependent on speculation by non-farming groups; and that foreign ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... tea at Belmont—nectar in Olympus—that evening. Was ever lieutenant so devoutly romantic? He had grown more fanatical and abject in his worship. He spoke less, and lisped in very low tones. He sighed often, and sometimes mightily; and ogled unhappily, and smiled lackadaisically. The beautiful damsel was, in her high, cold way, kind to the guest, and employed him ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... humblest conditions of their race, and carry to their lowly huts and cabins all the resources of science, all the suggestions of domestic, social, and political economies, all the appliances of school and industries in order to raise and elevate the most abject and needy race on American soil. If the scholarly and enlightened colored men and women care not to devote themselves to these lowly but noble duties, to these humble but sacred conditions, what is the use of their schooling ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... trail, and everything seems to conspire toward a pleasant trip. To prove it, Luck found another telegram waiting for him in Albuquerque. This was from Martinson, and might be interpreted as an apology more or less abject. Certainly it was an urgent request that he return immediately to Los Angeles and to his old place at the Acme, and produce Western ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... dead tailor, and reproving him for his impertinence, declared if he ever again looked up at her balcony she would contrive his death. The tailor, perfectly cured of love for his superior in life, made the most abject submission, thanked her for his deliverance, hurried home, prayed heartily for his escape, and the very next day took care to move from so ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... overview: About 80% of the population lives in abject poverty. Nearly 70% of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming and employs about two-thirds of the economically active work force. The country has experienced little job creation since ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... over a mountainous tract; we were out from seven in the morning till eight at night. After sitting a little by the fire I was near fainting from sickness. My depression of spirits led me to the throne of grace as a sinful abject worm. When I thought of myself and my transgressions, I could find no text so cheering as, 'My ways are not as your ways.' From the men who accompanied Sir Wm. Ouseley to Constantinople I learned that the plague was raging at Constantinople and thousands dying every day. ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... By the voice of Episcopal dignitaries the Popish clergy have been extolled, as men of the most eminent piety, while places have been furnished by government, to accommodate them in their mass service; and a branch of the bloody house of Bourbon, whom divine vengeance has reduced to the abject state of a wandering exile, is admitted among us, with all marks of honor, and, with his train, provided for, as if he were a zealous supporter of the Protestant cause, seeking an asylum from the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... was that a high official of the Criminal Investigation Department reached an outlying police station under the conduct of a young constable whose swelling pride was soon reduced to abject misery as the divisional detective-inspector, who was leaning on a high desk and chatting with a station-sergeant, sprang forward to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... dances came feasts of unheard of magnificence, during which the pope in the sight of all men completely ignored Lent and did not fast. The abject of all these fetes was to scatter abroad a great deal of money, and so to make the Duke of Valentinois popular, while poor Jacopo d'Appiano ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... profound impression in Germany. Henry's adherents fell away, and it seemed probable that the German nobles would elect another ruler in his stead. Henry then decided on abject submission. He hastened across the Alps and found the pope at the castle of Canossa, on the northern slopes of the Apennines. It was January, and the snow lay deep on the ground. For three days the emperor stood shivering ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion. This passion or emotion, according to those who deny her attachment to Bothwell, was simply terror—the blind and irrational prostration of an abject spirit before the cruel force of circumstances and the crafty wickedness of men. Hitherto, according to all evidence, she had shown herself on all occasions, as on all subsequent occasions she indisputably showed herself, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... neighbours those Saxons who dwelt far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,—and it was seldom that they did so,—they considered him as a filthy abject savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... panic-stricken as the danger from the shells threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw her arms round the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity of terror, to the woman whose hand she had shrunk from touching not five minutes since. "Where is it safest?" she cried. "Where can I ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... night, while the snow was falling in heavy flakes, and Huntsman's manufactory threw its red glare of light over the neighborhood, a person of the most abject appearance presented himself at the entrance, praying for permission to share the warmth and shelter which it afforded. The humane workmen found the appeal irresistible, and the apparent beggar was permitted to take up his quarters in a warm ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said at last, "that I came away from Middle Street a few minutes too soon. To tell the truth, I was in an abject state of fear. Next time I meet Mr. Frazer the Third I will be ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... a gray donkey came tearing down the beach. Max dressed as a farmer, with blue overalls and straw hat, was making a desperate effort to control the donkey, while Gwen in a chintz frock and pink sunbonnet sat close beside him, clinging to her seat in abject fear. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... one than that offered to him by the old barrister's reception of this news. Mr. Elphick's face not only fell, but changed; his expression of almost sneering contempt was transformed to one clearly resembling abject terror; he dropped his pipe, fell back in his chair, recovered himself, gripped the chair's arms, and stared at Spargo as if the young man had suddenly announced to him that in another minute he must be led to instant execution. And Spargo, quick to see his advantage, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... at him with a face full of abject fear and misery, but he was in that frame of weak-mindedness which made him ready to obey any one who spoke, and ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... often truly embarrassing, for she had as little desire that the besiegers should capitulate as she had intention of surrendering herself. In this respect Miss Wildmere's tactics were easier to carry out. She was not in the least annoyed by any number of abject and committed slaves, and she was approaching the period when she proposed to surrender with great discretion, but to whom was not ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... advanced sternly to the front doorstep. "'Dolph, come here!" she commanded. 'Dolph barked once again defiantly, then laid himself down on the step in abject contrition, rolling over on his back and ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quite correct in giving one of the reasons for Le Mierre's departure to Jersey. He told everyone how he was bothered by the spirit of Blaisette; but he did not add that abject terror of small-pox made him decide to spend some months with well-to-do relations in Jersey, which was quite exempt from ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... were produced by the ship's executive officer and passed around the circle. Hardly a word was spoken during this procedure, the usual debonair Bill Witt slouching against the hull of the Dewey, a picture of abject despair. It took only a few minutes to prepare the slips and they were collected by Officer Cleary, who in turn deposited them in the code box. Captain McClure stirred them around for a moment and then directed Officer ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying over the nature of his forgotten mission and hysterically ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... The utter helplessness of the man; his abject and complete surrender to the demon which possessed him—all this appalled him. He had seen many drunken men in his time—roysterers and brawlers, most of them—but never one like Poe. The poet seemed to have lost his identity—nothing ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to many a little boy, I am sure, to feel that he was not, by many miles, so simple as that most abject of all ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... contrast did O'Connor afford as he lay in all the abject helplessness of undisguised terror upon his death-bed, to the proud composure with which he had taken the field that morning. I had always before thought of death as of a quiet sleep stealing gradually upon exhausted nature, made ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... spirit of mischief, called for a rope to hang him; he thought himself lost, and through his tears he begged for mercy, pleaded for compassion, and promised atonement. General Bonham riding up at this juncture of the soldiers' sport, and seeing the abject fear of the old Northern Abolitionist, took pity and showed his sympathy by telling the men to turn him loose, and not to interfere with non-combatants. He was told to run now, and if he kept the gait he started with through the woods, not many hours elapsed before he placed the placid ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... religious revival, but the diplomats had least reason to complain, since they were more sought for there than they would ever be elsewhere. For young men Washington was in one way paradise, since they were few, and greatly in demand. After watching the abject unimportance of the young diplomat in London society, Adams found himself a young duke in Washington. He had ten years of youth to make up, and a ravenous appetite. Washington was the easiest society ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... symptoms of great discontent and dissatisfaction at their claims being so long neglected. The fact was, that the wretched peasantry of Ireland were in the most abject state of want, and as they had been kept in the most complete ignorance, and deprived of all the common forms of law and justice, they were gradually sinking into a state of barbarism; the consequence ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... is such a weather-beaten, sad, abject little town that one might readily experience surprise that the trains even condescend to stop there. It squats in the sand a few miles south of Tehachapi pass, hemmed in by mountain ranges ocher-tinted where near by, mellowed by distance ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... feeling frightened and not knowing what to do. Just then the bundle straightened itself a little and dropped its hands, revealing to her wondering gaze her own father's face, which wore the same awful look of abject fear which she had seen upon it when he passed through the hall beneath her just before Isleworth broke into flame on the night of her marriage. The eyes appeared to be starting from the sockets in an effort to clearly realize ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... not that, my child! It is here! here! here!" He struck his breast at every word, and bowed his head with abject grief. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... listened, Ann Eliza recalled the day when she had come on Mr. Ramy sitting in abject dejection behind his counter. She saw again the blurred unrecognizing eyes he had raised to her, the layer of dust over everything in the shop, and the green bronze clock in the window representing a Newfoundland dog with his paw on a ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... with victory, full of confidence in their strength, marching with their eyes fixed on Paris and London. They sang aloud as they swung through our streets. They sing no more. Instead, as I saw with my own eyes, many of them show in their faces the abject misery which ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Paint him at his desk. The desk is a throne; interpret it. We are ruled by mobs. Who paints mobs? What is wrong is this, that art is in the bondage of literature—sentimentality. We must record what we experience. Ugliness has its utility, its magnetism; the ugliness of abject misery moves you to think, to readjust ideas. We must be rebels, we young men. Ah, if we could only burn the galleries, we should be forced to ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... perform her duty of a faithful wife and a kind nurse to her distressed partner. The first perception she caught of the meaning of my communication, lighted up her eye, even in the midst of her wringing pains; and, starting up, she cried, that she would be the most abject slave to my will, and obey me in all things, if I could assure her of the blessing of being able to act as nurse and comforter to her husband. Now I saw my opportunity. On the instant I called up and despatched the waiting-maid ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... shall not avail thee, for I, Naya of Mo, tell thee that thy downfall is at hand, and thine enemies the English will press their way from the great sea, bridge the Prah, and cut a road across the great forest to this thy capital, where thou shalt make abject submission to their head-man and shall be carried into degrading captivity by them. Thy treasures shall be seized, the tombs of thy fathers shall be opened and desecrated, thy fetish-trees shall be cut down and thy slaves shall ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... separated from him by the bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject fright, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... immortal foes, which either party might violate at pleasure. 'Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.' Even in the most solemn mysteries no such thing as instruction was known—'the priest did not address the people at all.' Hence all moral theories, all doctrinal teaching was utterly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... many were reduced to the grade of the people. The ruin of the nobility was so complete, and depressed them so much, that they never afterward ventured to take arms for the recovery of their power, but soon became humbled and abject in the extreme. And thus Florence lost the generosity of her character and ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Britain, having in particular an extensive East India trade. Among its inhabitants were merchants, reckoned remarkably shrewd, and many of them very wealthy; and quite a number of aristocratic families, who were looked up to with the abject toad-eating kind of civility that follows "the nobility." On the whole, Bristol was a very fashionable, rich, cultivated, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the scarlet flood sweep over her cheeks and then as swiftly fade. It was abject surrender, and yet he had no thrill ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... that rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile Valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendor its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb befitting his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... of poverty. He was the eldest in a large family, with the father probably dead, and so likely was the chief breadwinner, earning for Himself and for the others a living by His trade. He was the village carpenter up in Nazareth, an obscure country village. I do not mean abject grinding poverty, of course. That cannot exist with frugality and honest toil. But the pinch of constant management, rigid economy, counting the coins carefully, studying to make both ends meet, and needing to stretch a bit to get them together. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... swashing, that went nigh to beat in his ribs, and seizing him by the mail gorges tore him from the saddle and cast him to the ground; whereupon the two Marids pounced upon him and binding him fast, dragged him off dejected and abject; whilst Gharib rejoiced in the capture of his enemy and repeated these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... attempt ends as usual in the repetition—in the circumstances the inevitable repetition—of the old disaster. Not that at times we do not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case. After seasons of much discouragement, with the sore sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, insisting for the thousandth time, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." But the lesson is soon forgotten. The strength supplied we speedily credit to our own achievement; and even the temporary success is mistaken for a symptom ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... government was but nominally representative. No Catholic, Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a vote or could hold a seat in Parliament. Industrially and economically the country was in the condition of France in the year of Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory. George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his unconstitutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his Commons and his Ministers. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... in an infinity of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... more rapid when de Courtois realized that he was in the hands of those who meant well by him. It was noticeable, too, as his senses returned and the panic glare left his eyes, that his expression changed from one of abject fear to a lowering look of suspicious uncertainty. He peered at Steingall and the hotel clerk many times, but gave Curtis and Devar only a perfunctory glance. Oddly enough, the fact that the two latter were in evening dress seemed to reassure him, and it became evident later that the presence of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... vixen, whose dresses were never rumpled, and whose temper was never ruffled. She had not blood enough in her veins to drive her to play or to anger. But she seemed to poor Mattie the loveliest creature she had ever seen, and our brown, hard-handed, blowzy tomboy became the pale fairy's abject slave. Her first act of sovereignty was to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... cabin door—and the door was wide open. He could see no life, but he could SMELL it. And smoke was rising from the chimney. He slunk across the open. In the manner of his going there was an abject humiliation—a plea for mercy if he had done wrong, a prayer to the creatures he worshipped that he might not be ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... mosque of Aya Sofia towering aloft, warmed his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and bombastic. And I read other communications of his—mostly abject appeals for help—devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble prayers—mostly to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... she was glad August sent the letter, and it served the schoolmistress right. The teacher went up to the pa once more; an hour later, August in person, accompanied, as usual, by a relation or two, delivered at the cottage an abject apology in writing, the composition of which would have discouraged the most enthusiastic advocate of higher education ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... under the trees of the park—"I'm more sorry still for another person who shall be nameless. But what have I to do with all this? And what on earth is the matter with you?" he resumed, noticing for the first time the abject misery in Mr. Bashwood's manner, the blank despair in Mr. Bashwood's face, which his answer had produced. "Are you ill? Is there something behind the curtain that you're afraid to bring out? I don't understand it. Have you come here—here in my private room, in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... we perceive between the Spaniard of those times and the abject and degraded vassal of the princes of the Austrian dynasty! Religious sentiment was not less energetic, it was not less profound, in the second epoch than in the first; but it was a sentiment perverted by superstition, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... them to his dishonour.—Have not some generals, from England, treated us like servants, nay, more like slaves than like Britons?—Have we not been under the most ignominious contribution, the most abject submission, the most supercilious insults of some custom-house officers? Have we not been trifled with, browbeaten, and trampled on, by former governors, in a manner which no King of England since James the Second has dared to indulge towards his subjects? ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... called out. And with a bewildered feeling of abject fear, Anna heard the quick steps of the ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... from her with every breath, the wretched woman allowed herself to be helped to the chair, into which she sank with an air of abject despair. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... upon him and the spell was broken. Jasper remained kneeling mutely there, shy man once more, crimson with blushes, a strange, almost pitiful creature in his abject confusion. A little smile flickered about the delicate corners of her mouth, but she turned and walked swiftly away down ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on was the gross libeller of Goldsmith, and the far grosser libeller of Garrick. 'When proceedings were commenced against him in the Court of King's Bench [for the libel on Garrick], he made at once the most abject submission and retractation.' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 294. In the Garrick Carres, (ii. 341) is a letter addressed to Kenrick, in which Garrick says:—'I could have honoured you by giving the satisfaction of a gentleman, if you could (as Shakespeare says) have screwed your courage to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have therefore to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honour, call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us then rely ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that which he feels in the general happiness of his species, nobly and generously volunteering his services to assist in promoting the cause of humanity, whilst there are thousands here strenuously advocating the giving a legal sanction to the oppression and abject slavery of their fellow-creatures. Such noble, generous, and fervid benevolence as yours, is highly honorable even to a Friend; and is a new and striking proof of that extended philanthropy, and pure and heaven-born ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... I've done,' said Lake, tranquilly. 'Mark tried to bully, but the cool old heads were too much for him, and he threw himself at last entirely on our mercy—and very abject ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and no resistance was attempted. For twenty-four hours the Creoles were in abject terror. Then Clark summoned their chief men together and explained that he came as their ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join with him they should be citizens of the American republic, and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... their women ill. These poor creatures get the worst of all their food, with the hardest of all their work; and are frequently very severely beaten by their hard and ruthless taskmasters. Degraded as are these aborigines generally, those in the immediate vicinity of Sydney are a more abject race than their more fortunate brethren who inhabit the distant parts of the Colony. This may be partly, if not wholly accounted for, by the facility with which at Sydney they can obtain ardent spirits, to procure ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... of themselves, while from you, men of Athens, this power is taken away. It can never be, methinks, that your spirit is generous and noble, while you are engaged in petty and mean employments; no more than you can be abject and mean-spirited, while your actions are honorable and glorious. Whatever be the pursuits of men their sentiments must necessarily ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... him thereof; and we will surely reward the thankful. How many prophets have encountered those who had many myriads of troops: and yet they desponded not in their mind for what had befallen them in fighting for the religion of God, and were not weakened, neither behaved themselves in an abject manner? God loveth those who persevere patiently. And their speech was no other than that they said, Our Lord forgive us our offences, and our transgressions in our business; and confirm our feet, and help us against the unbelieving people. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... brother's ranch was their next stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they blindly committed themselves ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... captain in the Army) was discovered at the hazard table, playing with loaded dice. Before this abject scoundrel could be turned out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother officers ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... ain't wanted, my boy. You don't go dropping in on your General in that promiscuous style. You wait till it's convenient to him to send for you, and then you apologize for your existence in the most abject terms at your command. I happen to know—friend at court, you see—that you'll be summoned about sunset, and if you behave very nicely, and answer prettily when you're spoken to, you may even be honoured by ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier |
